"Colonel Waynflete and his daughter will be left at liberty to go their way, if I surrender?" "Yes," he said. "Then in one minute I'll be with you," said I. Stepping inside the room, I first of all pulled the Colonel to the window, tore loose the clothes round his neck, and laid his head on the window-sill, in the good sweet air. Then crawling to Margaret, I unwrapped the jacket, and said briefly, "Force some of Kate's cordial down your father's throat. Goodbye!" I returned to the window, clambered out, hung at arm's length, and dropped to the ground. Striding up to the sergeant, I said carelessly, "Your turn this time, sergeant. To-day to thee, to-morrow to me--it's neater in the Latin but you wouldn't understand it--and all Brocton's dragoons shan't save your ugly neck." "Where the hell's your coat?" he demand fiercely. A cool question, indeed, after trying to suffocate me, but it was never answered. The air was on a sudden filled with the weirdest row I had ever heard. It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their shrillest and ghostliest. This was followed by a splutter of musketry, and this again by loud yells. Looking round I saw a swarm of strange figures sweep into the yard, half women as to their dress, for they wore little petticoats that barely reached their knees, but matchless fighting men as to their behaviour. On they came, with the pace of hounds, the courage of bucks, and the force of the tide. It was the Highlanders. The sergeant fled into and through the inn and, with the men from the corridor, got clean away. Not a man else escaped. Half the dragoons on the wagon were picked off like crows on a branch. The rest, and those in or about the yard, got their lives and nothing else barring their breeches, and that not for comeliness' sake but because they were useless. Every man jack of them, in less than five minutes, looked like a half-plucked cockerel, and their captors were wrangling like jackdaws about the plunder.